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01/22/2014

#Anthrocakes 2013 Revealed: King Tutankhamen's Tomb

This post is a follow-up to a previous blog, Have Your Anthropology and Eat It Too. It discusses the 2013 anthropology-themed cake made in Eric Hollinger and Lauren Sieg's spare time, that was their potluck contribution for the Department of Anthropology's annual holiday party. What better subject to pick than one of the most famous archaeological discoveries of all time? The tomb of King Tutankhamen of Egypt, was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922.

We had a lot of fun with you all during our #anthrocakes guessing game leading up to the big 2013 reveal: King Tut's Tomb! I wanted to follow up to share all of the great pictures we took of the cake (see our Flickr set on the cake here!), give you exclusive behind-the-scenes insights from Eric Hollinger on the making of this year's masterpiece, and of course, an explanation of our cryptic clues! Finally, the cherry on this year's cake had to be the epic faux-newspaper article that announces the discovery of the cake-site, A Sweet Find in Egypt! Can you find all of the candy references? Tweet to @archaeologylab and let us know how many you find! But, let's start from the beginning... 

Bb3YLWCCAAAWYnBTop-down image of the edible "site", King Tut's Tomb. Edible sculpture by Eric Hollinger and Lauren Seig, 2013. 

We started our contest to guess this year's cake off with a blog post on all of Eric Hollinger's previous anthropology cake creations (if you haven't seen these yet, you need to!). 

But before we get to our clues, read on to hear about how this year's cake was created! 

Behind-the-Cake by Eric Hollinger: 

    Lauren Sieg (who is a Research Specialist in the Repatriation Office) and I did a lot of research to prepare for this year's creation. We reviewed every book and web site we could find about Tut's tomb and the objects it contained. It was sometimes hard to find enough photos of all views of an object or a room. We found copies of Carter's notes and drawings with detailed measurements that allowed us to calculate the scale and dimensions that were necessary for the creation. The floor plan was mapped out on newspaper on a large board. 

    We spent months making individual objects in the tomb. Some, like some of the boxes, were made by slight carving and minor paint additions. Other pieces were very complex and required pouring chocolate into different forms and then carving, gluing (with chocolate) and painting them (with edible paints). The beds in the antechamber of the tomb took as much as 3 days a piece to make. The Anubis shrine took several days and several colors of chocolate that were carved into a jackal resting on pedestal.  

Painting a bedPainting one of the beds in the antechamber. Photo Credit: Lauren Sieg. 

    The shrine for the canopic jars in the Treasury was made by pouring melted chocolate into a lid and then resting an object with a very fine and detailed Egyptian design into the liquid until it was solid. Then it was carved into a flat panel that formed a side of the box. The same was done for the three other sides as well as the top and bottoms and all were glued together with melted chocolate. Butterscotch candy canes were added to the corners; cobras, made by shaping fondant and gluing yellow mini m&ms to their heads, were added to the top. The whole piece was then painted with edible gold paint.

The treasury The Treasury (left) and Anubis Shrine (right). Photo Credit: Eric Hollinger. 

    The most important piece was the sarcophagus. To make it, a real tourist item from Egypt, a miniature copy of the sarcophagus, was borrowed from David Hunt, Physical Anthropology Collections Manager. Then Mike Frank, an expert at casting projectile points, made a silica mold of the piece. Then melted chocolate was poured into the finished mold to make a solid replica of the sarcophagus in two pieces. The two pieces were then painted with edible gold, red, blue and black paints, using the tourist copy and photos of the real artifact as models. 

Painting the sarcEric Hollinger painting King Tut's sarcophagus, with mold used to create it at right. Photo Credit: Lauren Sieg.

    The walls of the original tomb were covered with detailed fresco murals which would have been hard to reproduce by hand. To make a edible version of the murals we had to find good color photos of each wall. I befriended a baker at my local Giant grocery store and he allowed me to work with his icing printer. They have a printer that uses edible inks to print onto thin sheets of icing the same size and shape as a typical sheet of paper. Normally the printed image is then peeled off the backing and set onto the top of a frosted cake, which causes it to bond with the moist surface. For the tomb, I made walls by gluing layers of graham crackers together with chocolate and then spread a thin layer of butter cream icing on it to provide a base for the mural icing. The photo of the mural was scanned and then printed onto the icing sheets at the proper scale and then transferred to the prepared "wall". 

Printed icing on crackersPrinted icing sheets bonded to the graham crackers. Photo Credit: Eric Hollinger.

    All of the walls and floors of the tomb were made with graham crackers. The tomb was filled with the furnishings. Then Lauren baked 10 organic cakes which were positioned around the walls to form the ground around the tomb. The cakes were covered with a chocolate butter cream frosting. Then tents for the archaeologist were made with left over icing sheets and ribbon candy strips.

Frosting with butter creamFrosting the cakes!  Photo Credit: Lauren Sieg.

    For a bit of humor we also wrote an article, A Sweet Find in Egypt, in the 1920's style about the discovery of the tomb incorporating references to candy brands and other sweets.  The cake was eaten or artifacts carried off to be curated by individual staff members but the article will hopefully live on longer.

    As with previous creations, we learned a lot about the archaeological site and artifacts from having to understand it well enough to reproduce it in edible form. The process is both creative and educational and each year poses new challenges.

The Twitter Contest & Clues Explained:

20131219_093906Too bad we didn't provide a treasure map! That would have been too easy. Detail view of King Tut's Tomb Cake, by Eric Hollinger and Lauren Sieg. Photo Credit: Meghan Mulkerin

    Even though this cake is unveiled privately at our department's holiday party, we wanted all of you out there to be able to guess with us on which theme Eric would choose this year (these cakes are kept highly secret until party-day every year! Eric makes them on his own time at home, which is a pretty amazing gift to us all). So, under strict secrecy, Eric revealed this year's theme to me. Thrilled, I thought up some appropriately cryptic brainteasers, and then the clues started flying on Twitter...  

First Clue:

This slightly botched quote can be read in full on Howard Carter's tombstone, which resides in Putney Vale Cemetary, London, and reads: "May your spirit live, May you spend millions of years, You who love Thebes, Sitting with your face to the north wind, Your eyes beholding happiness."

800px-Grave_of_Howard_CarterGrave of Howard Carter. Image Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Second Clue:

    We received some good guesses, and provided additional mini clues in our reponses to a couple of the guesses! The second clue, Savonarola, referred to an X-chair, which is also known as a Savonarola, Dantesque, or X-frame chair. X-frame chairs are folding chairs (sometimes only made to look like folding chairs) and have been found all the way back to ancient Greece and Egypt-- and here you thought your lawn chairs were a modern idea! Savonarola was a hint to the cake's theme because of the folding x-chair that was found in King Tutankhamen's tomb (way cooler than a lawn chair, btw-- check it out!). This clue led some astray to medieval Italy, but we provided our first sub-clue, for those closely following the trail:

    Our winner in the guessing game, Kathryn Sampek, truly went out of her way to solve even our most obscure clues, by out obscuring us! She found an additional lead in our Savonarola clue that we didn't even intend, and tweeted the following after she guessed, making reference to a little known play called Savonarola: A City's Tragedy, from 1904, in which one of the characters says to Savonarola, "Tut! In the name of justice, I ask it." Way to go, Kathryn!

Another sub-clue came from @meanlouise's guess, for an Apis Bull cake. We tweeted back:

This was a reference to King Tutankhamen's horus name, Kanakht Tutmesut, meaning: the strong bull, pleasing of birth. 

Third Clue:

    This clue was banking on our readership's (hopeful) love of Dr. Seuss, "How many, many feet you meet..." and in need of support referenced the fact that King Tut's feet were found to be in need of support, so much so that he was sent into the afterlife with his orthopedic sandals! I had to make this one really cryptic because a simple google of orthopedic sandals and archaeology gave away the answer! 

Fourth Clue:

    SNL (Saturday Night Live) was a hint to get you all headed towards our 8th clue, which I gave out when it became clear that SNL by itself wasn't getting any guesses. Keep reading below, and you'll find out what it meant! 

    The fourth clue was followed by several sub-clues, through our tweets to the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Field Museum, all of which have had large exhibits on King Tut, with the British Museum and the Met having been among the first museums to show The Treasures of Tutankhamun tour back in the 1970's. We also tweeted to the Getty, which has a whole field conservation project on the Tomb of King Tutankhamen going on now, in cooperation with Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Fifth Clue:

Fresco a secco is the decorative technique that was used to create the beautiful frescos found in the tomb of Tutankhamen. It was a popular technique in the ancient world, which you can read more about here.

Egypt.KV62.01Painted walls made with fresco a secco technique in the burial chamber. Image Source: Wikipedia Commons. 

By the time we sent this clue, you all had made many creative guesses: 

But then we received the closest guess yet from @dtrap. Unfortunately, it was close, but no cigar. We asked for the specific archaeological site or object. But she was hot on our trail! Good job, Diane.

Sixth Clue:

    This one was my favorite clue; a huge tip-off if you read the Wikipedia page, and a personal homage to the first movie I ever saw in theatres, The Land Before Time. Some people talk about Indiana Jones, but that was the movie that started me in a digging direction. I just happened to want to be a paleontologist before I got into archaeology! This clue referred to Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (not ducky). He was an English Egyptologist and the mentor and teacher of one, Howard Carter, as well as to many other budding Egyptologists of the day. 

Flinders_PetrieSir William Matthew Flinders Petrie. He's not nearly as cute as ducky though. Image Source: Wikipedia Commons.

Seventh Clue:

    Twenty-four pounds of Au, better known as gold! This clue was a dead giveaway to any internet search afficianado, but we were almost out of guessing time before the big reveal. Sure enough, this clue struck gold with Kathryn Sampeck, who later confirmed her guess after Clue 8, through this tweet: 

389px-Tutanchamon_(js)_1King Tutankhamen's funerary mask. Image Source: Wikipedia Commons. 

Eighth Clue:

    With only 2 hours to go, we started throwing out the big clues. And sure enough, Steve Martin finally got our guessers there:

    This clue, of course, was about Steve Martin's classic song, "King Tut", preformed on SNL (See clue #4), with the "Toot Uncommons." Dan gets all of the credit for this great clue, which happened to be a bit before my time :) (who am I kidding though, us archaeologists are nuts over things before our time!). 

Steve-Martin-King-TutSteve Martin performing "King Tut" with the Toot Uncommons on Saturday Night Live on April 22, 1978. Image Source.

But we couldn't let on that she'd guessed it right until the big reveal, so we kept throwing out clues!

Ninth Clue:

    Board games are one of my favorite things to do in my spare time, and King Tut was no different; he brought at least four board games into the afterlife with him, including a game called senet, as you can learn about in the Field Museum's interactive web tour of the tomb. 

800px-Senet_game_pieces_(Tutankhamun)The senet game found in the tomb of Tutankhamen. Image Source: Wikipedia Commons.

Tenth Clue: 

    Google honored Howard Carter's 138th birthday in 2012, with this amazing doodle: 

Howard_Carter-2012-hp

Google doodle of Howard Carter, May 9, 2012 by Willie Real. Image credit: Google, who provides behind-the-scenes details on the illustration.

Eleventh Clue:

    This clue was a paraphrase of Howard Carter's words to Lord Carnarvon, when he was asked what he could see upon opening the tomb. "Can you see anything?"- Lord Carnarvon. "Yes, wonderful things."-Howard Carter. Indeed!

The Big Reveal: 

    As I revealed the 2013 cake on Twitter, I used Howard Carter's own words, describing the first time he saw the golden sarcophagus of King Tutankhamen.

The Winner:

Inside the cake-site: 

We got some great comments from many of you:

Thanks also to everyone for sharing these awesome cakes far and wide! 

We can't wait until next year. Thanks everyone; please let us know if you have questions.

By: Meghan Mulkerin, Collections Specialist Contractor with Eric Hollinger, Archaeologist. 

Posted at 04:50 PM in Archaeology, Food and Drink, Games, History, Museums, Weblogs | | Comments (3)

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12/17/2013

Have Your Anthropology and Eat It Too!

Happy Holidays from the Department of Anthropology   

If you love this post, don't miss Eric Hollinger's 2013 cake of King Tutankhamen's Tomb #anthrocakes.  

    Every year in the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History, a magical time sneaks up on us—the time for our annual holiday party! The wait is made all the more exciting for those of us who all try to guess what Eric Hollinger will be making for the party this year. Every year he makes an amazing anthropologically themed cake or edible sculpture for us all to enjoy.

2012 cakeCaramel Cliff House by Eric Hollinger, Archaeologist, Department of Anthropology at NMNH, 2012. 

    Last year it was “Caramel Cliff House”, a truly awesome interpretation of the Cliff Dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park, complete with its own "National Pastry Service, U.S. Department of Sugar" brochure guide to the "site" (aka cake!). If you would like a tongue-in-cheek tour of the Caramel Cliff House, please download the Caramel House Brochure written by Lauren Sieg. Caramel Cliff House featured caramel cake and caramel icing with structures built using over 5,000 individual caramel bricks.  Below ground kivas and multi-storied towers were among the edible buildings!

    In 2011, my personal favorite, Eric spent over 60 hours sculpting a giant chocolate Aztec calendar stone complete with green candy-coated chocolate “jade” inlays. It was carved from a solid block of chocolate, 2.5 feet in diameter, using a single small nail as the carving tool.  A lot of math and geometry was applied to this one; amazing!

1324067187442Aztec calendar stone. Chocolate sculpture by Eric Hollinger, Archaeologist, Department of Anthropology at NMNH, 2011. 

2011 cakeView 2 of  Aztec calendar stone. Chocolate sculpture by Eric Hollinger, Archaeologist, Department of Anthropology at NMNH, 2011. 

The sculpture's archaeological counter-part, the calendar stone, often called a Sun Stone, is not a literal calendar, but an incredibly detailed representation of Aztec cosmology, with a focus on the sun god. See more information here at the Architect of the Capitol's website. It's a complicated history, even the word Aztec requires explanation. However, tasty, tasty chocolate sculptures require no explanation; it was delicious. 

AzteccalendarstoneImage of Aztec Calendar Stone, now located in Museo Nacional de Antropologia in Mexico.  Image Courtesy Library of Congress. Source. 

    In 2010, to honor the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Natural History Building (which was at that time called the U.S. National Museum; today the National Museum of Natural History), the subject went wider than just Anthropology, to include a recreation of the entire rotunda of the musuem with parts of the exhibits made in cake and candy!

2010 cake_cropElephant in the Rotunda of NMNH and other exhibits. Edible sculpture by Eric Hollinger, Archaeologist, Department of Anthropology at NMNH, 2010.

Henry the elephant in the rotunda was carved from solid chocolate with candy cane tusks.  The candy exhibits included a mummy, fossils and parts of the ocean hall, as well as many of our most famous objects on exhibit. The giant squid was made of marzipan; the Hope Diamond was made from blue rock candy; the giant fossil shark jaws were made using M&M candy shells embedded in marzipan and orchid.  NMNH Osteologist Chris Dudar, helped out by making a fossil fish! Even the columns of the rotunda were included, made from giant candy canes. As a crowning touch, Eric scattered m&m’s on the floor to represent all the people that had visited the NMNH over the years-- one candy for every 1,000 visitors! 

Elephantcake_crop2Fossil Fish Sculpture by Chris Dudar. Elephant in the Rotunda of NMNH and other exhibits. Edible sculpture by Eric Hollinger, Archaeologist, Department of Anthropology at NMNH, 2010.  

Giant squidThe Giant Squid! (Department of Invertibrate Zoology). Edible sculpture by Eric Hollinger, Archaeologist, Department of Anthropology at NMNH, 2010.

GeologyhallThe botany, geology, and vertebrate zoology exhibits!  Edible sculpture by Eric Hollinger, Archaeologist, Department of Anthropology at NMNH, 2010.

    In 2009, we were surprised and delighted by edible Moai modeled after the Easter Island statues! This creation showed heads and capstone being quarried and moved to alters.  The Moai were made variously from chocolate, marzipan, fudge and Rice Krispy treats. 

2009 cakeClose-up view: Easter Island Cake. Edible sculpture by Eric Hollinger, Archaeologist, Department of Anthropology at NMNH, 2009.

AdriennewitheasterislandcakeEthnologist Adrienne Kaeppler, Curator of Oceania enjoys the Easter Island Cake. Edible sculpture by Eric Hollinger, Archaeologist, Department of Anthropology at NMNH, 2009.

Luckily for Eric, these Moai were not life-sized, like the Moai that you may have met before when you came to visit us through the Constitution Avenue lobby of the Museum!

Moai_compositeSource: Moai or Easter Island Stone Figure. Photo Credit: Chip Clark. 

    Then came the year of the terracotta warriors! In 2008, Eric painstakingly recreated the terracotta army from the tomb of the first Emperor of China. The horses and 5 different soldier types were cast out of chocolate to make a total of 101 statues.

 2008 cake cropTerracotta Warriors. Edible sculpture by Eric Hollinger, Archaeologist, Department of Anthropology at NMNH, 2008. 

Luckily these chocolate warriors were not as imposing as the real thing, and were quickly dispatched by the hungry denziens of the Department of Anthropology.  

Terra-cotta-soldiers-631I don't know that I'd be as comfortable attacking these guys! Source: Terra Cotta Soldiers on the March. Photo Credit: (O. Louis Mazzatenta / NGS Image Collection). 

    In 2007, Eric worked with Lauren Sieg of NMAI to create a Mandela, or Tibetan sand painting. This “painting” was applied to a butter cream frosted cake using a bendy straw to “rasp” the colored sugars into place similar to the way the monks apply the sand in their works. The process took 27 hours. 

2007 cake cropMandela (Tibetan sand painting). Edible sculpture by Smithsonian Archaeologists Eric Hollinger and Lauren Sieg, 2007.  

    In 2006, Eric's partner in awesomeness, Lauren Sieg, took the cake, by leading the design on this Southwestern black-on-white inspired cake. Similar designs were found all around the southwest, especially in the Mongollon cultural area. Here are some examples of the related Mimbres pottery in NMNH. The "seeds" in the top of this cake are chocolate covered sunflower seeds.

2006 cake cropSouthwest style pot cake.  Edible sculpture by Lauren Sieg, Archaeologist at NMAI; assisted by Eric Hollinger, 2006. 

    In 2005, the Haida Chocolate House, complete with totem poles, made everyone want to move in! The interior of the house was made with the same architectural details as real Haida houses. Notice the freshly-caught chocolate fish laid out to dry. The Haida Nation is located primarily in British Columbia, with some territory in Southeastern Alaska. 

2005 cake cropHaida Chocolate house. Edible sculpture by Eric Hollinger, Archaeologist, Department of Anthropology at NMNH, 2005. 

    Finally, the year this amazing cake-venture began was 2004, when Eric debuted the Mississippian Temple Mound archaeological site under excavation. This tableau was made from 14 separate cakes (notice the marble cake strata in the excavated portions) and blue Jell-O for the river. The excavation is taking place in the foreground and features screen, backdirt pile, shovel tarp and tarp weights, as well as a field table with pith helmet, trowel and Brunton compass. In summary: it was awesome; well, except for people's need to touch the Jell-O river to find out what it was made of, according to one informant I talked to! We were going to eat that, people! :) 

  Mississipiantemplemound2004Mississippian Temple Mound archaeological site under excavation.  Edible sculpture by Eric Hollinger, Archaeologist, Department of Anthropology at NMNH, 2004.  

    So, which one is your favorite? Any bets on what Eric will make this year? CONTEST TIME! Please make your guesses for which archaeological site or artifact Eric will make this year, below in the comment section, and I will tweet the 2013 cake on Thursday, the 19th!

    To the *first* correct guesser, we will send a free copy of the Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 13: Plains, and Volume 17: Languages! The volumes represent an amazing amount of Smithsonian scholarship. We hope you’ve enjoyed this sneak peek at our annual departmental potlatch. I personally can’t wait for Bill Fitzhugh’s oyster soup. Happy Holidays everyone, and see you next year. 

By: Meghan Mulkerin, made possible by Eric Hollinger and Lauren Sieg's boundless creativity! 

Posted at 02:07 PM in Archaeology, Food and Drink, History, Museums, Weblogs | | Comments (10)

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